2 Samuel 1:27

1:27 How the warriors have fallen!

The weapons of war ¹  are destroyed!

2 Samuel 20:20

20:20 Joab answered, “Get serious! ²  I don’t want to swallow up or destroy anything!

2 Samuel 22:6

22:6 The ropes of Sheol ³  tightened around me; ⁴ 

the snares of death trapped me. ⁵ 

2 Samuel 22:29

22:29 Indeed, ⁶  you are my lamp, ⁷  Lord.

The Lord illumines ⁸  the darkness around me. ⁹ 

2 Samuel 22:33

22:33 The one true God ¹⁰  is my mighty refuge; ¹¹ 

he removes ¹²  the obstacles in my way. ¹³ 

[1:27]  ¹ sn The expression weapons of war may here be a figurative way of referring to Saul and Jonathan.

[20:20]  ² tn Heb “Far be it, far be it from me.” The expression is clearly emphatic, as may be seen in part by the repetition. P. K. McCarter, however, understands it to be coarser than the translation adopted here. He renders it as “I’ll be damned if…” (II Samuel [AB], 426, 429), which (while it is not a literal translation) may not be too far removed from the way a soldier might have expressed himself.

[22:6]  ³ tn “Sheol,” personified here as David’s enemy, is the underworld, place of the dead in primitive Hebrew cosmology.

[22:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “surrounded me.”

[22:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “confronted me.”

[22:29]  ⁶ tn Or “for.” The translation assumes that כִּי (ki) is asseverative here.

[22:29]  ⁷ tc Many medieval Hebrew mss, some LXX mss, and the Syriac Peshitta support reading תָּאִיר (ta’ir, “you cause to shine”) before the words “my lamp.” See Ps 18:28. The metaphor, which likens the Lord to a lamp or light, pictures him as the psalmist’s source of life. For other examples of “lamp” used in this way, see Job 18:6; 21:17; Prov 13:9; 20:20; 24:20. For other examples of “light” as a symbol for life, see Job 3:20; 33:30; Ps 56:13.

[22:29]  ⁸ tc The Lucianic Greek recension and Vulgate understand this verb to be second person rather than third person as in the MT. But this is probably the result of reading the preceding word “Lord” as a vocative under the influence of the vocative in the first part of the verse.

[22:29]  ⁹ tn Heb “my darkness.”

[22:33]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the God.” See the note at v. 31.

[22:33]  ¹¹ tc 4QSam^a has מְאַזְּרֵנִי (mÿ’azzÿreni, “the one girding me with strength”) rather than the MT מָעוּזִּי (ma’uzzi, “my refuge”). See as well Ps 18:32.

[22:33]  ¹² tn The prefixed verbal form with vav consecutive here carries along the generalizing tone of the preceding line.

[22:33]  ¹³ tn Heb “and he sets free (from the verb נָתַר, natar) [the] blameless, his [Kethib; “my” (Qere)] way.” The translation follows Ps 18:32 in reading “he made my path smooth.” The term תָּמִים (tamim, “smooth”) usually carries a moral or ethical connotation, “blameless, innocent.” However, in Ps 18:33 it refers to a pathway free of obstacles. The reality underlying the metaphor is the psalmist’s ability to charge into battle without tripping (see vv. 33, 36).